So I sat down and took a stiff rye and crushed ice she gave me and watched her while she fixed a gin and tonic.
I’ve kicked around Rome for four years now and I haven’t led an entirely celibate life. Italian women are good and exciting.
I have had my big moments with them, but as I sat there, looking at Helen in her white dress, I knew this could be the biggest moment of all my moments: this was something special, something that made me short of breath and a little crazy in the head.
She went over to the fireplace and leaned against the overmantel while she regarded me with a half-smile.
Because I knew this was dangerous, and I wouldn’t need much encouragement to walk right into trouble, I said, “Well, how are you making out at the university?”
“Oh, that was just a gag,” she said carelessly. “I had to tell my father some story or he wouldn’t have let me come here alone.”
“You mean you don’t go to the university?”
“Of course I don’t.”
“But won’t he find out?”
“Why should he? He’s too busy to bother about me,” she returned and I caught the bitterness in her voice. “He’s only really interested in himself and his latest woman. I was in the way, so I told him I wanted to study architecture at the university at Rome. As Rome is miles away from New York, and once here, I couldn’t suddenly walk into his room where he might be trying to convince some little gold digger that he is much younger than he looks, he fell over himself to send me here.”
“So the horn specs, the flat-heeled shoes and the scraped-back hair were part of the gag, too?” I said, realizing by telling me this she was making me an accessory, and if Chalmers found out, the chopper might come down on my neck as well as hers.
“Of course. When I’m at home I always dress like that. It convinces my father that I am a serious-minded student. If he saw me as I am now, he would have hired some respectable old lady to chaperone me.”
“You’re pretty cold-blooded about it, aren’t you?”
“Why not?” She moved over and dropped into a lounging chair. “My mother died when I was ten. My father has had three other wives: two of them were only two years older than I am now, and the other was younger. I was as welcome to all of them as an outbreak of polio. I like being on my own: I have lots of fun.”
Looking at her, I could believe she did have lots of fun: probably more than was good for her.
“You’re just a kid, and this is no way for you to live,” I said.
She laughed.
“I’m twenty-four and I’m no kid, and this is the way I want to live.”
“Why tell me all this? What’s to stop me sending a frantic cable to your father, telling him what’s going on?”
She shook her head.
“You won’t do that. I’ve talked to Giuseppe Frenzi about you. He gives you a very good reference. I wouldn’t have brought you up here if I wasn’t sure of you.”
“Just why did you bring me up here?”
She stared at me: the expression in her eyes made me suddenly breathless. There was no mistaking that expression: she was giving me an invitation to go ahead and make love to her.
“I like the look of you,” she said. “One can get very tired of Italian men. They’re so intense and so direct. I asked Giuseppe to bring you to the party, and here we are.”
Don’t imagine I wasn’t tempted. I knew all I had to do was to get up and take her in my arms and there would be no opposition. But it was all a little too blatant; too cold-blooded, and this attitude of hers shocked me. There was also the question of my job. I was more interested in holding on to that than fooling around with her. I got to my feet.
“I see. Well, it’s getting late. I’ve got some work to do before I turn in. I’ll be moving along.”
She stared up at me, her mouth tightening.
“But you can’t go now. You’ve only just come.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve got to go.”
“You mean, you don’t want to stay?”
“It’s not what I want to do: it’s what I’m going to do.”
She lifted her arms and ran her fingers through her hair. That is perhaps the most provocative gesture a woman can make. If she has the right shape, there is no more telling move she can make than to raise her arms and look at a man as she was looking at me. I nearly fell for it, but not quite.
“I want you to stay.”
I shook my head.
“I really have to go.”
She studied me for a long moment, her eyes expressionless. Then she shrugged, lowered her arms and stood up.
“All right, if that’s the way you feel.” She crossed to the door, opened it and went out into the hall. I went after her and picked up my hat that I had left on the hall chair. She opened the front door, glanced out into the corridor and then stood aside.
I was reluctant to go. I had to force myself out into the corridor.
“Maybe you might like to have dinner with me one night or take in a movie.”
“That would be very nice,” she said politely. “Good night.” She gave me a distant smile and shut the door in my face.
III
Of course it didn’t remain like that. I wish it had, but a relationship between a man like myself and a girl like Helen is certain sooner or later to become complicated.
I tried to put her out of my mind, but I didn’t succeed. I kept seeing the expression in her eyes when I had left her, and that did things to me. I knew I was inviting trouble, and yet there was this fascination about her that made any trouble seem unreal. In my saner moments, I told myself that as far as I was concerned she was rank poison, but in my less saner moments I told myself — who cares?
For the next five or six days she was constantly in my mind. I didn’t tell Gina that I had met Helen at the party, but Gina has an awkward knack of being able to know to some extent what is going on in my mind, and I caught her looking at me several times with a puzzled, inquiring expression.
By the sixth day I was more or less a dead duck. I had got this blonde, lovely girl so much on my mind that I found I wasn’t concentrating on my job. I decided to ease the strain, and when I returned to my apartment, I called her.
There was no answer. I called three times during the evening. At the fourth try, around two o’clock in the morning, I heard the receiver lift and her voice said, “Hello?”
“This is Ed Dawson,” I said.
“Who?”
I grinned into the receiver. That was a little too obvious. That told me she was as interested in me as I was in her.
“Let me jog your memory. I’m the guy who runs the Rome office of the Western Telegram.”
She laughed then.
“Hello, Ed.”
That was better.
“I’m lonely,” I said. “Is there any chance of you coming out with me to-morrow night? I thought if you hadn’t anything better to do, we might have dinner at Alfredo’s.”
“Will you hold on a moment? I must look in my little book.”
I held on, knowing I was being given the treatment and not caring. After a two-minute pause, she came back on the line.
“I can’t manage to-morrow night. I have a date.”
I should have said it was too bad and hung up, but I was too far gone for that.
“Then when can you fix it?”
“Well, I’m free on Friday.”
That was three days ahead.
“Okay, let’s make it Friday night.”
“I’d rather not go to Alfredo’s. Isn’t there somewhere else quieter?”
That brought me up short. If I wasn’t thinking about the danger of us being seen together, she was.
“Yeah, that’s right. How about the little restaurant opposite the Tevi fountain?”
“I’d like that. Yes, that would be lovely.”
“I’ll meet you there. What time?”
“Half-past eight”
“Okay: good-bye for now.”
Li
fe didn’t mean much to me until Friday. I could see Gina was worried about me. For the first time in four years I was short-tempered with her. I couldn’t concentrate, nor could I work up any enthusiasm for the job on hand. I had Helen on my mind.
We had dinner at the little restaurant. It wasn’t a bad dinner, but I can’t say I remember what we ate. I found talking difficult. All I wanted to do was look at her. She was cool, distant, but at the same time, provocative. If she had invited me up to her apartment I would have gone and to hell with Sherwin Chalmers, but she didn’t. She said she would take a taxi home. When I hinted I would go with her, she handed me a beautiful brush-off. I stood outside the restaurant, watching the taxi edge its way up the narrow street until I lost sight of it. Then I walked home, my mind seething. The meeting hadn’t helped: in fact it had made things worse.
Three days later I called her again.
“I’m pretty busy,” she said, when I asked her to come to a movie. “I don’t think I can manage it.”
“I was hoping you could. I’m going on vacation in a couple of weeks time. I won’t be seeing you then for a month.”
“Are you going away for a month?” Her voice had sharpened as if I had caught her interest
“Yes. I’m going to Venice and then on to Ischia. I plan to stay there for about three weeks.”
“Who are you going with?”
“I’m going alone. But never mind that: how about this movie?”
“Well, I might. I don’t know. I’ll call you. I have to go now. There’s someone at the door,” and she hung up.
She didn’t call me for five days. Then, just as I was about to call her, she rang my apartment number,
“I’ve been meaning to telephone you,” she said as soon as I came on the line, “but I haven’t had a moment up to now. Are you doing anything particular right now?”
The time was twenty minutes past midnight. I was about to go to bed.
“You mean right now?”
“Yes.”
“Well, no. I was going to bed.”
“Will you come to my place? Don’t leave your car outside.”
I didn’t hesitate.
“Sure, I’ll be right over.”
I entered her apartment block like a sneak thief, taking elaborate care no one would see me. Her front door was ajar, and all I had to do was to step across the corridor from the elevator into her hall.
I found her in the lounge, sorting through a stack of Long Play records. She was wearing a white silk wrap and her blonde hair was about her shoulders. She looked good, and she knew it
“So you found your way up?” she said, putting the records aside and smiling at me.
“It wasn’t so hard.” I closed the door. “You know, we shouldn’t be doing this: this is the way to start real trouble.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“You don’t have to stay.”
I went over to her.
“I don’t intend to stay. Why did you ask me over?”
“For heaven’s sake, Ed!” she exclaimed impatiently. “Can’t you relax for a moment?”
Now I was alone with her, my caution asserted itself. It was one thing to imagine being alone
with her, but with my job hanging to the consequences of being found out, actually being with her was something else besides. I was sorry now I had come.
“I can relax,” I said. “Look, I’ve got to think of my job. If your father ever found out I was fooling around with you, I’d be through. I mean that He would see I never got another newspaper job as long as I live.”
“Are you fooling around with me?” she asked, opening her eyes very wide and looking surprised.
“You know what I mean.”
“He won’t find out — why should he?”
“He could find out. If I were seen coming here or leaving he could hear of it.”
“Then you must be careful not to be seen. It shouldn’t be difficult.”
“This job means everything to me, Helen. It’s my life.”
“You’re not what I would call a romantic type, are you?” she said and laughed. “My Italian men don’t think about their jobs, they think about me.”
“I’m not talking about your Italian men.”
“Oh, Ed, do sit down and relax. You’re here now, so why are you getting so worked up?”
So I sat down, telling myself that I was crazy in the head to be here.
She went over to the liquor cabinet.
“Will you have a Scotch or rye?”
“A Scotch, I guess.”
I watched her, wondering just why she had asked me over at this time of night. She wasn’t being provocative.
“Oh, Ed, before I forget: would you look at this cine? I bought it yesterday, and the release thing doesn’t work. Do you understand cines?”
She waved to where an expensive leather camera case hung from a chair. I got up, opened the case and took from it a 16 mm. Paillard Bolex with a triple lens turret.
“Hey! This is nice,” I said. “What in the world do you want with an item like this, Helen? It must have cost plenty.”
She laughed.
“It did come high, but I’ve always wanted to own a cine. A girl should have at least one hobby, don’t you think?” She dropped crushed ice into two glasses. “I want a record of my stay in Rome for my old age.”
I turned the camera over in my hands. It suddenly occurred to me that she must be living well beyond the allowance her father was giving her. He had told me he was giving her sixty dollars a week. He had said he didn’t want her to have any more. Knowing the price of apartments in Rome, this one would cost something like forty dollars a week. I looked over at the liquor cabinet that was loaded with every kind of drink. How was she managing to live in this style? Then there was this expensive camera she had suddenly bought.
“Has someone left you a fortune?”
Her eyes flickered, and for a moment she looked confused, but only for a moment.
“I wish they had. Why do you ask?”
“It’s not my business, but all this must cost you a lot, doesn’t it?” I waved my hand to take in the room.
She shrugged.
“I suppose it does. My father gives me a generous allowance. He likes me to live this way.”
She didn’t look at me while she spoke. Even if I hadn’t known exactly how much her father was giving her, the lie was pretty obvious. Although I was puzzled, I realized it wasn’t my business so I changed the subject.
“What’s wrong with the camera then?”
“This release thing won’t work.”
Her finger touched the back of my hand as she pointed. “The safety catch is on,” I said,
showing her. “This thing here. You press it down, and the release then works. They put the safety catch on so the motor won’t run accidentally.”
“For heaven’s sake! I nearly took it back to the shop to-day. I guess I’d better read the book of instructions.” She took the cine from me. “I’ve never been very smart with mechanical things. Look at all the film I’ve bought.” She pointed to where ten cartons of 16 mm. film stood on the desk.
“You’re not going to use all that on Rome, are you?” I said. “You have enough there to photograph the whole of Italy.”
She gave me an odd look that seemed to me to be a little sly. “I’m keeping most of it for Sorrento.”
“Sorrento?” I was puzzled. “Are you going to Sorrento then?”
She smiled.
“You’re not the only one who takes vacations. Have you ever been to Sorrento?”
“No. I’ve never been so far south.”
“I’ve rented a villa just outside Sorrento. It’s lovely and very, very isolated. I flew down to Naples a couple of days ago and arranged everything. I’ve even got a woman from a nearby village to come in and do for me.”
I had a sudden feeling that she wasn’t telling me this without reason. I looked sharply at her.
“Sounds
nice,” I said. “When are you going?”
“The same time as you’re going to Ischia.” She put the camera on the table and came over and sat beside me on the settee. “And, like you - I’m going alone.”
She looked at me. The invitation in her eyes set my heart thumping. She leaned towards me, her full, red lips parting. Before I knew what I was doing, she was in my arms, and I was kissing her.
We held that kiss for perhaps twenty seconds, and it really got me going, then I felt her hands on my chest, pushing me back, and that steady, hard pressure brought me to my senses. I let go of her and stood up.
“This is a crazy way to behave,” I said, breathing like an old man who has run up a flight of stairs. I wiped the lipstick off my mouth.
“A crazy way to behave in Rome,” she said, leaning back and smiling up at me, “but not in Sorrento.”
’’Now, look…” I began, but she held up her hand, stopping me.
“I know how you feel about me. I’m not a child. I feel the same way about you,” she said. “Come with me to Sorrento. Everything’s arranged. I know how you feel about father and your job, but I promise you it will be perfectly safe. I’ve rented the villa in the names of Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Sherrard. You’ll be Mr. Sherrard, an American business man on vacation. No one knows us down there. Don’t you want to spend a month with me — just the two of us?”
“But we can’t do it,” I said, knowing there was no reason why we shouldn’t do it, and wanting to. “We can’t rush into it like this…”
“Don’t be so cautious, darling. We’re not rushing into anything. I’ve planned it most carefully. I’ll go down to the villa in my car. You’ll come down the next day by train. It’s a lovely place. It faces the sea on a high hill. There’s no other villa for at least a quarter of a mile.” She jumped to her feet and fetched a large-scale map that was lying on the table. “I’ll show you exactly where it is. Look, it’s marked on the map. It’s called Bella Vista — isn’t that cute? From the terrace you can see the bay and Capri. It has a garden: there are orange and lemon trees and vines. It’s completely isolated. You’ll love it.”
“I dare say I will, Helen,” I said. “I admit I’d like to do it. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t, but what’s going to happen to us after the month’s over?”
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